Aggressive Defense Leads Portland Fire to Big Revenge Victory Over Washington

A Strong Comeback for the Portland Fire

At the halfway point of the season, the Portland Fire have shown they can learn from their mistakes. Two and a half weeks ago, the Fire suffered a heartbreaking quadruple-overtime loss to the Washington Mystics. However, on Thursday, they got their revenge in a significant way.

The Fire started strong with an 11-9 lead that quickly grew to 28-13 after the first quarter. By the middle of the second quarter, the lead had expanded to 43-20, and the Mystics never managed to recover. The Fire ultimately defeated Washington 75-56, showcasing a dramatic improvement in their performance.

While the Fire (11-14) have struggled with turnovers all season — averaging 15 per game, which ranks 14th in the league — they flipped the script on Thursday. The Mystics turned the ball over 19 times, and the Fire capitalized by scoring 22 points off those turnovers.

Coach Alex Sarama highlighted the team’s strategy of shrinking the floor and playing heavily in the gaps. “I thought the team did a great job of that,” he said. He also praised Sarah Ashlee Barker for her performance, which included 10 points, 7 rebounds, 4 steals, and 2 assists.

“Our identity as the Portland Fire is to be aggressive and be in the gaps and help one another. Like, that’s when we win our win games,” Barker said. “And tonight you saw that we were helping each other and just being very aggressive, defensively.”

Carla Leite led the Fire with 14 points and 5 assists. She joked about not wanting to see the game go to quadruple-overtime again, referencing her previous performance where she tied the Fire franchise record for points in a single game (32, tied with Jackie Stiles) in a 124-123 loss to the Mystics in June.

“We did a great job tonight,” Leite said. “We start the game in a good way. So it just gives, like, confidence around the whole game.”

Both Leite and Barker agreed that the Fire’s 90-87 loss to Connecticut on Tuesday helped them play better in the first quarter. Against the Sun, Portland was outscored 32-23 and played sluggish defense in the first quarter.

“Last game against Connecticut, we started off kind of soft,” Barker said.

Thursday’s win wasn’t against a bottom-dweller. The Mystics have been one of the league’s hottest teams in recent weeks. In the past month, Washington is 7-3 with wins over the Lynx, Liberty, and Dream. Just last week, Sonia Citron was named a WNBA All-Star for the second time. On Thursday, the Fire held her to 8 points while going 0-fer at the 3-point line.

Sarama expressed his satisfaction with keeping Citron in check this time around, noting that she previously gashed the Fire for 32 points in their last meeting.

“Just definitely more disruption of the ball. I felt we gave up way too much in game one with too many chases. We were going over a lot way too frequently and that was allowing her just to get downhill, play two-on-ones and get to the rim,” Sarama said.

The Fire have shown promise at slowing down guards over the past couple of weeks. In the 102-92 win against Atlanta, they held Rhyne Howard (18.2 points per game) to just 10 points. In the 88-80 loss to Las Vegas, they held Chelsea Gray (12.3 points per game) to 8 points. And in the 77-72 win at Seattle, they held Flau’jae Johnson (13.1 points per game) to just 1.

However, the Fire faced challenges on Thursday night as well. They struggled in the rebounding department again. The Mystics, who boast one of the league’s toughest young frontcourts with 6-foot-5 Shakira Austin and 6-foot-7 Lauren Betts at center and 6-foot-3 Kiki Iriafen at forward, had 45 rebounds to Portland’s 30. This included 19 offensive rebounds leading to 15 second-chance points.

“I think the concerning thing for me was the rebounding,” Sarama said. “If we could rebound better, defensively, it would be incredible to see what we could be doing because I feel like it’s a tough one because I feel like, tactically, we’re doing everything we can do and it’s things like blow-bys and offensive rebounds which are hurting us. So aside from those two things, I felt like we were really, really good. We just, we have to keep doing whatever we can to improve in those areas.”

It didn’t help that Megan Gustafson is not currently with the team as she’s getting married this weekend. Serah Williams got her first WNBA start on Thursday and scored 12 points while grabbing 5 rebounds.

The Fire forced Austin (who led Washington with 19 points and 9 rebounds) and Betts to play out of the paint as Emily Engstler (8 points, 5 assists) and Frieda Bühner (9 points, 5 rebounds) spent more time at the 3-point line.